A Short Walk from Harrods

by Dirk Bogarde

  I got back to the house, holding on to the railings and crawling on my knees when they petered out.

  ‘It’s pretty bad. I don’t suppose the car will even get here. Wreckage all over the place.’ Forwood had managed to dress, shaved himself, cut his face. A scrap of Kleenex wagged on his chin. ‘I’ll have to get to the scan. It’s the most important one.’

  I had made some tea, and we sat in the kitchen among half-emptied packing-cases and assorted casseroles. The car arrived, amazingly, on time at six o’clock. It was not Ron, this morning, but Tony: young, bearded, determined. I was grateful to him for his calm. No problem, he said, we’ll get there. And we did, by driving through the Park across the grass, swerving past giant trees, scattered tooth-picks on a billiard table, across the branch-strewn sand of Rotten Row, dodging flailing boughs, bumping and bouncing. Holding on, spinning, sticking, revving, bursting free, we finally reached the gates by Marble Arch. It was fully light by now. Tony, I noticed with interest, had never lost his cockaded cap. ‘I’ll wait,’ he said. ‘I have a book. I hope they’ve got power in there, lots of lines are down.’

  They had. It took a little time to get everything together, but eventually they came for him and I sat looking through a battered copy of Woman and Beauty. Wasn’t a good scan. I got a feeling that it wouldn’t be when a bespectacled man in a white coat passed me on my way to the scanning chamber. He touched my arm and said, ‘Very good luck.’ I said thank you. But I knew, by his compassionate smile and the hand on my arm, that there was doubt. So does kindness betray us.

  A pleasant Asian woman, crisp in white, a shining bun, smiling, arrived with Forwood. ‘I’m afraid I peed myself.’ He was bleakly apologetic. She shook her head, earrings swung. ‘People nearly always do. We are quite used to that.’ And to me she said, ‘Mr Wrigley has your telephone number of course? He’ll be sure to call you in a day or two.’

  He did, one late afternoon. I was putting summer shirts and things away in a drawer in my attic; Forwood was down in the kitchen making himself some tea. I picked up the telephone instantly, before he would even reach it. Mr Wrigley said it was not good news, he was afraid. It was not a shadow. A tumour. I heard myself saying, ‘Is it very big?’, as if that would make any difference, and his reply, ‘I’m not talking about a pea. I’m talking about three bloody centimetres …’ When he rang off, seconds later, I heard the kitchen extension hang up.

  The cornflower blue carpet up to Wrigley’s office was always so fresh and clean, a yellowing monstera deliciosa in the corner of the stairs – I always thought it was a silly name, always wondered how many anxious and frightened feet had gone down the blue flight to Harley Street. Or up, for that matter.

  Forwood wanted to know if he would be in pain and was assured that he would not be. Cancer of the liver was not painful. He refused, there and then, any vague possibility of chemotherapy. ‘I’m too vain. I’m damned if I’m going to lose what hair I have; I’ve lost all my teeth already. Clackers. I’m not doing any more.’

  Wrigley, a good man, accepted that, and said that there was a new pill on the market. Japanese. It had been unusually successful in a large number of cases there. Would he like to try them? He had a supply he’d brought from Tokyo and was willing to share them with accepting patients who would take the risk. Forwood took it. As he said, ‘What else do I do?’ It was agreed that the treatment would commence from the following Monday. I don’t remember why.

  Ron was driving that day. In the back we were both silent. When we turned into Oxford Street he began a long, jolly story about some competition in which he’d taken part on Tenerife: windsurfing. He’d won a cup and a free return first-class ticket on Iberian Airlines. Pretty good, wasn’t it? At his age? After all, he pointed out with a deprecating cough, he was no chicken was he? At his age, pretty good, eh? Excellent.

  Somehow, oddly enough, now that it had been spelled out, in large letters, now that the very worst was known, it felt not so bad. Apprehension, not being sure, the constant wear and tear of anxiety hidden, covered, fell away. There was no need to speak of the thing: it had been spoken of. There was always the chance that the Japanese pill might work, might, as Wrigley said, start to ‘demolish’ the tumour. Still there was hope. Not all was black and lost, there was plenty yet to work for and to fight for. We’d just, we agreed, shut up about it. Even Gareth, his son, was not to be told. No one should know. What on earth was the point of dragging others into the affair? It would only make it worse all round. So that was it. It was rather as if we were two dogs who had successfully swum a flood-raged river. Safely across, after great effort, we stood on the bank, shivering, trembling. Now we must shake off the water, roll ourselves dry, and run off once more to seek new adventures. Something like that.

  At any rate, Frank and George had finished building two desks in a little room next to mine, with shelves and drawers all about, and Forwood was soon occupied carting books and papers and files carefully. To start up the new ‘office’. I hung all the pictures which could be got to go up the staircase. It took quite a long time, clambering about with hammers, picture hooks and tape measures.

  Forwood came down from his office to admire my efforts. ‘Don’t overdo things. Remember we’re no chickens,’ he said, remembering Ron.

  ‘I’ve just finished. That’s the last. The Yellow Sea. Like it there?’

  ‘Fine. I’ll go down and do some rice. A bit of rice and prawns for supper? Okay for you?’

  ‘Okay. Need any help?’

  ‘May spill a little. I think I can manage. I’ll call.’

  He went down the stairs to the kitchen. I poured my first whisky of the day, picked up Exchange and Mart, which I bought to see if I could find a second-hand carpet for the downstairs room, and instantly found myself, face crushed against the banisters, inelegantly lying head first down the stairs. I still remember the smell of the carpet. And my surprise.

  It was a bit jokey.

  Lying there I couldn’t understand anything. I hadn’t had a drink. Not a sip. My legs were twisted through the banisters. That was clever of them. The carpet was rough on my face. Like being pressed into corn stubble. I couldn’t move. But I could speak. I yelled down the stairs, ‘Stroke!’, but Forwood was running water in the kitchen and didn’t immediately hear. When he did he came up as quickly as he could, ashenfaced, tried to lug me off the floor. Mercifully my left arm seemed to work, and I managed to drag myself into a huddle, slumped hard against the sitting-room door, which was open, thank God, otherwise I would have crashed into it and knocked myself silly. I remember all this part quite clearly. The new coal gas fire was flickering away deceitfully in its Regency basket, my whisky stood, absolutely untouched, where I had left it, the Exchange and Mart had spewed over the floor at my side. Mockingly almost. I leant back and tried to lift my right leg with my working hand but it was far too heavy. Ever carried a human leg? In your arms? I had to once in Normandy, with help. I’m always amazed that the body can maintain two of them.

  ‘A stroke, I fear,’ I said.

  Forwood sat in a chair by the fireplace. ‘Right side. But you can speak. Can you see all right?’

  ‘Yes. Listen, I’m not slurring, am I?’

  He shook his head. We half laughed.

  ‘Golly!’ I said. ‘We really are paying for those years on the hill, aren’t we?’

  ‘We are. I’ll call the firm.’ The firm were the doctors who were in charge of him. Mainly. ‘I’ll probably only get a recording. It’s after office hours.’

  ‘Well, before you do, I’ll have to have a pee. I can’t just lie here and stream away. New carpet too. Empty that Evian bottle and bring it over.’ I thought it was a pretty rum thing to do, but there was no alternative at that moment. Anyway I did it, and an hour later, or about that time, Jonathan Hunt was beside me full of apologies because he’d been called out to deal with a madman. Real, mark you, not a druggie, just violently mad. Yes, indeed, I’d had a stroke. Mild, as far as he could see.
He called an ambulance, a private firm. No lamps flashing, no sirens wailing. Discreet in the little ‘Montmartre’ street.

  I heard him speak to Edward VII, and heard him say, ‘He’s on his way as soon as the ambulance arrives,’ and sagged with relief. He’d got me in. The ambulance arrived about forty minutes later. I had Forwood’s wallet in case tips were needed. And of course they were. Two pleasant men struggled me down the narrow staircase, the elegant banister wobbling and bending under their weight. I begged Forwood not to tell anyone except Maude, but to wait until morning to telephone the family. No point in screwing up their night. In the morning we’d know more about everything. Gave the two ambulance men twenty quid each – they had been very careful – and we drove away smoothly and silently. No one knew in Kensington. In the twilight of the ambulance they talked about someone who was playing someone at somewhere at football on the telly. They wondered who might have scored after they had had to leave to collect me? Through the windscreen ahead I saw the lights of a restaurant somewhere and two unaware people being shown to a table up on a balcony, a pink lamp on their table. They didn’t know that I was watching them, stuck at traffic lights below, struck by a stroke. Lucky them.

  This is the time when you find out that it is a bit too late to worry about the state of your underwear. Our nanny, Lally, always insisted that, as children, Elizabeth and I were immaculate in our garments whenever we went out. Lest we be hit by a motorcycle and sidecar or, worse even, an omnibus. She hadn’t ever thought of a mild stroke. Anyway, it was too late to worry. I was almost there; and then there. By which time I had mentally let go … I don’t remember much of the rest of the evening. I gave in and let others, better equipped, deal with me. I remember a room, a ceiling, a bed; people in blue and white, a chink of instruments, and being rapidly undressed and wrapped in a kind of shroud. It tied at the neck, and a young man in a white coat took out his key-ring and rasped his car key up my instep. I was mildly interested. He said did I feel it? I said no. And he did it again but roughly, and I still said no. He said goodnight, and I asked if I’d sleep. He said someone would make sure of that, don’t worry.

  And I don’t remember anything else until I opened my eyes in the gloom and saw my sister, Elizabeth, sitting beside my bed. She looked as if she had just come in from the garden. Which, as it transpired, was almost what she had done.

  ‘Hullo,’ I said. ‘I told Forwood not to say anything.’

  ‘He didn’t. Until six o’clock this morning. You can speak all right? That’s good.’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Mark [her son] drove me up. I came right away.’

  ‘I really didn’t want anyone worried. Until things were sorted out …’

  ‘Thank God Tote did call. It’s in all the papers. I’d have died if I’d read it.’

  I tried, I remember, to struggle up. Failed. Fury, bewilderment, even rage couldn’t get my body to behave. ‘It can’t be. No one knows. Dr Hunt, Tote, Maude, me – no one else.’

  She named the paper. Huge headline: ‘DIRK WILL NEVER WALK AGAIN?’ – something like that.

  ‘One of the nurses was reading it. She was livid. Just come on duty and they’re all hanging round the front door asking questions. Journalist people.’

  ‘But no one knows! Unless the ambulancemen …’

  ‘I’ve told the children, and our brother, I’ll call Lally as soon as I get back. I’d better go now, they said two minutes. I’ve been two minutes, and I love you very much, and you’ll just be fine. Gareth and Maude – is that her name? – are at your house now with Tote, so there’s nothing to worry about.’ She leant down and kissed me and I heard her shoes squeak away across the polished rubber of the floor.

  I don’t remember much about the first few days. I just lay about. People came and stuck thermometers down my throat, prodded things in my leg from time to time, went away again. I really didn’t care. It was difficult, I found, to collect my thoughts. My head felt rather like a suitcase suddenly spilled in the street, things scattered everywhere. Unconnected, unlinked. Useless as they lay. I was unafraid, uncaring.

  The first moment of clear thought that came drifting into the mess, the first tangible object from the scattered suitcase as it were, was the clear knowledge that I’d never now be able to return to France. Whatever the outcome of anything else might be (would be, truthfully), I was stuck. If I ever walked again I’d have to start out all over, and I couldn’t do that on the hill, or anywhere else. The past had been severed by the fall downstairs. There was no going back. Period. End. Finish. Done.

  I didn’t think that there was enough, or indeed any, energy left to begin again from scratch, and I didn’t very much care. I lay still and silent in my little grey room. Flowers began to arrive, letters, cables, cards. People had read the papers, someone said it was news on the BBC. Big deal.

  The house in Kensington was running smoothly: Gareth (and indeed Maude) had taken control. Gareth got hold of Rupert and his wife Jacquie, to break off their first holiday in months to buttle and cook. I supposed that they all slept somewhere? In sleeping-bags all over the sitting-room? I knew he’d moved into my room.

  Forwood came every day: weary, gaunt, valiant, refusing to start the Japanese course of pills until I was out. But when, I wondered, would I be out? Something rather odd had happened in my head. I suddenly didn’t give a damn. My glass was empty. Not full, or half full. Dry. Clear. A void. I am not, and I never have been, a man prone to despair. It’s not my thing at all. I had always faintly disapproved of those who did give in to it and crumpled. I always thought that one should fight it, beat it, deny it. And I was not in despair now. I know despair, I have been witness to it, seen the mark it has made on others, comforted those who suffered from it, but I have never felt it to be any part of my bodily, or for that matter, mental make-up. I managed to play characters in films, in the theatre, who were riven by despair simply because I had observed it closely, but had never given way to it. Therefore my judgement was clear, objective, uncluttered and I could replay it in a role convincingly. I don’t really know where this all came from: something in childhood had forged a sort of strength … and my father’s words, which always so alarmed, even distressed, strangers – ‘We are not expected to fail in this family’ – were a continual echo in my head. Others might fail, they could do what they wished, but I could not.

  And yet, lying there in the shadowy grey room, it might seem that I was just about to break the rule. That I was about to give up and let go of the reins of my life. Easy to do. Everything was well taken care of around me, there was no possible future ahead, as far as I could see. I had, I felt, done all that I could do, and now this was the way it would finish. I would just sleep to death. Painless, smooth, perfectly comfortable. I had absolutely no intention of going on with the fag-end of my life as a cripple. The fact that feeling had gradually returned to my hand and right arm didn’t much mollify me. It made bed-life a little easier, but my leg was still a log. Introspection is what this was all about, and there was a mass of dead time in which to indulge in it, especially at night after we had been, as they said, ‘put down’ for sleep. One was undisturbed: a face might peer fleetingly at the little glass panel in the door, check that one was not on the floor or raving mad, and disappear. But the thoughts wouldn’t go so fast. They grew darker with the night. And although despair never reached me, hopelessness did – a different thing.

  In the blackest pit of night, that weary time about three o’clock, I rang my bell for the booster sleeping-pill which usually got me through until the morning. On swift and silent feet the pretty young night nurse was beside me, with a small paper cup containing the pill. She set it on the bedside table, out of reach; sat easily on the end of my bed, hands folded in her lap. Had I had a good day? People been to see me? I’d heard, of course, about the disaster at King’s Cross underground station? They still weren’t certain how many had perished. She used the word with pleasure, rolling it rou
nd her lips, making it sound rather like the rubber in a hot-water bottle or a bicycle tyre. Perished. Not merely dead. I had watched it on the television. It was dreadful, really appalling, but could I have my pill? I’d been awake for hours. She said it was right beside me, so I tried to reach for it with my now-active right arm, as she showed not the least inclination to assist me – testing me, I reckoned – but couldn’t reach it. Can’t reach it, she said? Well, get out of bed, it’s only a step away. I was patient, explained that I couldn’t walk. She knew that? Yes, oh yes, she said, she did know that. She also knew that I was behaving bloody badly. What on earth did she mean? Behaving bloody badly? Behaving disgracefully, a spoiled brat. Because you’ve been faced with a little set-back which you feel you can’t lick. So you’re giving up. You have no guts! You can walk if you want to. You can relearn easily, it’s a mild stroke you had. You have speech, your arm works, right? How you dare throw it all up now, I don’t know! You’ve given so many people such pleasure for so many years – you still can, you still owe it to them. You can’t just throw in the towel and say, ‘Enough!’ I really thought you had a little more guts than that!

  In my shamed silence she reached for the paper cup, handed it to me, and I took the pill and got wheeled down to physiotherapy the next morning, where an excessively bright, jolly female wrestler began to teach me how to walk in a complicated game which entailed the use of a great many walking-sticks spread along the floor. But I started up again. And I never stopped.